MEDIA RELEASE BY TERRY O’GORMAN, VICE-PRESIDENT, QUEENSLAND COUNCIL FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES

Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney’s attack on the CMC accusing it of “repeatedly allowing itself to be used as a political tool” combined with a threat “to look at the (CMC) legislation to see what we can do about it" is a worrying portent for the future of the CMC.

Civil Liberties Council Vice President (Terry O'Gorman) said that Mr Seeney should immediately publicly release details of where the “talks that had already begun”’ about the future of the CMC are currently at.

“The Civil Liberties Council agrees with the CMC that it is ‘obliged to consider complaints and probe issues of public interest”, Mr O’Gorman said.

“The CMC legislation does not give the CMC a choice. It must as a matter of law examine a complaint put before it”, Mr O'Gorman said.

Mr O’Gorman said that the CMC has been making public criticism for years about politically inspired complaints being lodged with it with great accompanying fanfare during the course of election campaigns.

“The CMC has repeatedly urged local government councillors not to use the CMC during election campaigns for political purposes. It is arguable that this is what the Labor Party did against Mr Newman in particular and the LNP generally during this year’s State election campaign”, Mr O'Gorman said.

Mr O’Gorman said that there are still elements within the LNP who resent what the Fitzgerald Inquiry did to the former Nationals by exposing corruption and serious maladministration and thereby ending decades of Nationals government.

“That resentment flared into the open during the 1996/98 Borbidge government which appointed the discredited and eventually aborted Connolly-Ryan Inquiry which wasan endeavour to seriously weaken the powers of the CMC”, Mr O'Gorman said.

“We have been arguing for a long time that the CMC should be thoroughly reviewed if only because it has existed for over two decades without a searching and independent Inquiry as to whether it is still fit for purpose. We have argued that, like New South Wales, there is a strong case for separating the CMC into a Queensland Crime Commission and a separate Police Integrity Commission such as exists in New South Wales”, Mr O’Gorman said.

“It is worrying, though, that the Newman government with its huge majority and with its controlling numbers in the Parliamentary Crime Misconduct Committee could unilaterally emasculate the CMC because of its historical dislike of the organisation’, Mr O'Gorman said.

Mr O'Gorman said that any review of the CMC should be done by an eminent group of interstate lawyers and ex politicians in order to give the process independence and credibility from the  Queensland political scene.